The Certain Hour | Page 8

with how much more than she knows a
desirable
mother will tell her children--finds the
book's tentative explorer, just
now, amply equipped
with prejudices, whether acquired by second
thought or
second hand, concerning the book's topic. As

endurability goes, reading the book rises forthwith
almost to the level
of an afternoon-call where there is
gossip about the neighbors and
Germany's future. We
average-novel-readers may not, in either case,
agree
with the opinions advanced; but at least our prejudices
are
aroused, and we are interested.
And these "vital" themes awake our prejudices at
the cost of a
minimum--if not always, as when Miss
Corelli guides us, with a
positively negligible--
tasking of our mental faculties. For such
exemption we
average-novel-readers cannot but be properly grateful.

Nay, more than this: provided the novelist contrive to
rouse our
prejudices, it matters with us not at all
whether afterward they be
soothed or harrowed. To
implicate our prejudices somehow, to raise
in us a
partizanship in the tale's progress, is our sole
request.
Whether this consummation be brought about
through an arraignment
of some social condition which
we personally either advocate or
reprehend--the
attitude weighs little--or whether this interest be

purchased with placidly driveling preachments of
generally
"uplifting" tendencies--vaguely titillating
that vague intention which
exists in us all of becoming
immaculate as soon as it is perfectly
convenient--the
personal prejudices of us average-novel-readers are

not lightly lulled again to sleep.
In fact, the jealousy of any human prejudice
against hinted

encroachment may safely be depended upon
to spur us through an
astonishing number of pages--for
all that it has of late been
complained among us, with
some show of extenuation, that our
original intent in
beginning certain of the recent "vital" novels was to

kill time, rather than eternity. And so, we average--
novel-readers
plod on jealously to the end, whether we
advance (to cite examples
already somewhat of
yesterday) under the leadership of Mr. Upton
Sinclair
aspersing the integrity of modern sausages and
millionaires,
or of Mr. Hall Caine saying about Roman
Catholics what ordinary
people would hesitate to impute
to their relatives by marriage--or
whether we be more
suavely allured onward by Mrs. Florence
Barclay, or Mr.
Sydnor Harrison, with ingenuous indorsements of the
New
Testament and the inherent womanliness of women.
The "vital" theme, then, let it be repeated, has
two inestimable
advantages which should commend it to
all novelists: first, it spares
us average-novelreaders
any preliminary orientation, and thereby

mitigates the mental exertion of reading; and secondly,
it appeals to
our prejudices, which we naturally prefer
to exercise, and are
accustomed to exercise, rather
than our mental or idealistic faculties.
The novelist
who conscientiously bears these two facts in mind is

reasonably sure of his reward, not merely in pecuniary
form, but in
those higher fields wherein he
harvests his chosen public's honest
gratitude and
affection.
For we average-novel-readers are quite frequently
reduced by
circumstances to self-entrustment to the
resources of the novelist, as
to those of the dentist.
Our latter-day conditions, as we cannot but
recognize,
necessitate the employment of both artists upon
occasion.
And with both, we average-novel-readers, we
average people, are
most grateful when they make the
process of resorting to them as
easy and unirritating
as may be possible.
V

So much for the plea of us average-novel-readers;
and our plea, we
think, is rational. We are "in the
market" for a specified article; and
human ingenuity,
co-operating with human nature, will inevitably
insure
the manufacture of that article as long as any general
demand
for it endures.
Meanwhile, it is small cause for grief that the
purchaser of American
novels prefers Central Park to
any "wood near Athens," and is more
at home in the
Tenderloin than in Camelot. People whose tastes
happen
to be literary are entirely too prone to too much longfaced

prattle about literature, which, when all is
said, is never a controlling
factor in anybody's life.
The automobile and the telephone, the
accomplishments
of Mr. Edison and Mr. Burbank, and it would be

permissible to add of Mr. Rockefeller, influence
nowadays, in one
fashion or another, every moment of
every living American's
existence; whereas had America
produced, instead, a second Milton
or a Dante, it would
at most have caused a few of us to spend a few
spare
evenings rather differently.
Besides, we know--even we average-novel-readers--
that America is
in fact producing her enduring
literature day by day, although, as
rarely fails to be
the case, those who are contemporaneous with the
makers
of this literature cannot with any certainty point them
out.
To voice a hoary truism, time alone is the test
of "vitality." In our
present flood of books, as in
any other flood, it is the froth and scum
which shows
most prominently. And the possession of "vitality,"

here as elsewhere, postulates that its possessor must
ultimately perish.
Nay, by the time these printed pages are first read
as printed pages,
allusion to those modern authors whom
these pages cite--the
pre-eminent literary personages
of that hour wherein these pages
were written--will
inevitably have come to savor somewhat of
antiquity: so
that sundry references herein to the "vital" books now

most in vogue will rouse much that vague shrugging
recollection as

wakens, say, at a mention of Dorothy
Vernon or Three Weeks or
Beverly of Graustark.
And while at first glance it might seem
expedient--in
revising the last proof-sheets of these pages--somewhat

to "freshen them up"